As is well known, the postal service employs automated mail processing systems to facilitate the handling, sorting and delivery of various types of mailers including envelopes and postcards. These automated systems employ codes and electronic code reading devices to effect more efficient and accurate mailing processing, improved consistency of delivery, lower postal operating costs and savings to postal customers.
Numerical mail processing codes corresponding to the address destinations and known as ZIP (Zone Improvement Program) codes are commonly used on envelopes. ZIP coded envelopes without other codes are sent through a postal station where the numerical ZIP codes are electronically scanned by an optical character reader (OCR) and a processing or sorting code, presently a bar code in the form of a series or pattern of vertical short and tall bars and which corresponds to the individual numerical code, is applied to each envelope. The bar coded envelopes are passed through a bar code reader (BCR) which electronically reads the bar codes and bar code sorters (BCS) to automatically sort the envelopes according to their bar codes or address destinations.
Reply envelopes that are mailed inside of originating or outgoing envelopes by senders such as business and other organizations are now often preprinted with bar codes. The bar code for reply envelopes for a given organization can be readily printed by the sender when the reply address and any other matter is printed on each of the reply envelopes since the reply address and bar code are the same for each such reply envelope. By preprinting the bar code on the reply envelopes they do not have to be passed through the OCR and encoder to be bar coded by the postal service and this can result in cost savings to both the sender and the postal service. Some organizations are preprinting bar codes on outgoing envelopes so that even further savings can be realized under certain circumstances with prebarcoded mail.
When the sender preprints the bar code on the reply envelope another processing or identification code, presently known as a facing identification mark or code (FIM), is also preprinted to provide machine detectable codes for the automatic facing and cancellation of reply mail as well as to identify prebarcoded reply mail early in the postal processing system. Different FIM marks or codes are presently used for identifying "courtesy reply" and "business reply" envelopes having preprinted bar codes. Such FIM codes are presently in the form of a series of parallel vertical lines printed by the sender in a location spaced from the bar code area.
The use of outgoing envelopes containing reply envelopes are, however, relatively expensive since two separate and complete envelopes are required and both envelopes must be separately printed with addresses.